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Labor Supply, the Acquisition of Skills, and the Location of Southern Textile Mills, 1880–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Leonard A. Carlson
Leonard A. Carlson
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322
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Abstract

This paper offers the hypothesis that the development of the textile industry in the South was shaped by the fact that by 1870 most experienced workers lived in the Piedmont. Thus, a firm which wished to hire experienced workers would have been led to choose the Piedmont; similarly, mills producing more difficult finer count cloth would have chosen the Piedmont in order to hire experienced workers. Finally, the persistence of a virtually all white workforce may be explained by the fact that most experienced workers were white and would have resisted working in integrated mills.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 65 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

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